IndyFrisco wrote:That's why I put tart cherry trees in the yard.
Unless your climate dictates it, this is probably a mistake. As I'm sure you know, sweet cherries are sweet because of a higher percentage of total sugars, and tart cherries obviously have less sugars.
On a sidenote, in winemaking, this percentage of sugars is known as "degrees Brix," or much more commonly, just "brix."
The sweetness isn't so much dictated by brix when the fruit hits the crushpad(which yours is probably like my home "crushpad" -- the garage floor), but in how you make the wine. Last batch I did, they were
very sweet cherries. And during the fermentaion, sugar was actually added later. Yet the finished product was completely dry, although a couple of the drinkers added sugar after-the-fact-by-the-glass because they preferred a sweet dessert wine.
If you want to make something with some "chew" to it, it's more about getting a full extraction(which we accomplished by doing a cold ferment in an extra fridge), rather than starting with less sugary fruit. Regardless how sweet you want the final product to be, you still essentaiily want the highest amount of sugars you can get.
After all, isn't alcohol just yeast-shit? And doesn't yeast eat sugar?
There you go...
I'll tell you what...if the cherries we harvested this year, which were few and far between, and still sitting in a freezer, end up getting made into wine(just debating if it's even worth it for such a dismal crop, although the fruit is absolutely top-notch), I'll send you a bottle and let you see for yourself.
Putting the sugars in perspective -- ever had a swet bottle of syrah? Ever tasted sweet zinfandel? I kinda doubt it -- yet those varietals can hit the crushpad at 30 brix and up, even up to 36 in the case of some late-harvest zins(which I can't remember the exact number, but I think 36 brix won't ferment completely dry...but I'm not sure). Yet, I doubt you've ever tasted a sweet one. Those ferment completely dry.
So, to be blunt -- those cherry wines you've had of your friends/neighbors tasted the way they did because the person who made it had no idea what they were doing...bottom line. The residual sugars you're tasting is the C&H they were stupid anough to add after the fact, and have nothing to do with the natural sugars in the fruit. As I mentioned, I started with very sweet cherries, and even added sugar(during fermentation), and still fermented it completely dry. The only way to get it sweet after that is to add sugar after the fermentation, which I'm not down with, except in the cases of wines that are only suitable as dessert varietals.
And most "home-winemakers" have little idea about how tartaric acid and whatnot comes into play when fermenting, and is often amongst the myriad reasons why most homemade wine tastes like dirty urinal cakes.
But bottom line -- the sweeter the fruit, the better. I doubt your going to find any fruit that needs to have reverse-osmosis done to make it dry(<----irrelevant to this discussion....I just wanted to sound cool by dropping in the phrase "reverse osmosis"....which is a california thing, usually used to dry out zin that's hit outrageous brix on a late-harvest year).
But, there's much joy to be had making one's own booze. I just have the good fortune to be able to bring my shit to a working winery, and have an actual expert walk me through the process.
One of these days, I WILL have a still, too. I could make brandy up the yingyang.
I like mead.
